Foxmask

by Juliet Marillier

  “I’ve noticed,” Niall’s voice broke the stillness, “the small irregularity in your work—deliberate, I suspect—where there’s a gap in the border pattern, a pathway out, one might say, amidst the trail of vines there. That interests me.”

  Her first reaction was to roll the fabric quickly over, to cover what she had made; it was secret, not to be shared, most certainly not to be discussed. But then, had she not put into today’s labor what she felt most strongly in this small house of men: trust? She unfolded her work again, touching the part he had mentioned with her finger.

  “You have good eyesight,” she said.

  “For an old man? Yes, I still seem to manage. Will you explain the pattern to me? A thing of wonder, it seems to be. Some might even call it a talisman of power. Not your Thorvald, evidently. His eyes are less acute, for all his youth.”

  “I will tell you what this means, this gap in the border, if you will tell me what those little writings are, the ones that flow into the margins of your manuscript. It looks as if the letters are trying to get out.”

  The quill stopped moving. Niall smiled; Creidhe caught her breath, for his expression was a wondrous blend of sadness, regret, acceptance, touched with a slightly guilty look, like that of a boy caught out in a small misdemeanor.

  “Oh, Creidhe,” he said quietly. “Your eyesight surpasses mine, I think; it goes straight to the heart of things. Very well, I will tell if you will. Ladies first.”

  “All right.” She laid the Journey on the table, unrolled just a little, so he could see the parts she had made today, and the last time she had worked on it. The images from before were dark and strange; her fear and disquiet showed in the shadows, the half-glimpsed clutching hands, the faces that both smiled in welcome and screamed in furious repudiation. She did not show him the place where she had made the Isle of Clouds.

  “It is difficult to explain,” she said. “Because of what this is, the power it holds within it, there’s a need for a safeguard. I make a new part every day if I can. I call it the Journey. There is so much in these stitches, these images, far more than wool and linen, that it is necessary to provide a—an escape route. If I did not do so, the love, the hate, the fear and joy would simply build and build, until it could not be held in so small an object. It would become too dangerous, too powerful. So I make this little path, here in the border: a way out. It is not regular; it must not be a pattern, or it risks becoming lost in the whole. This is the way with everything we make. Each blanket, each hanging, each garment possesses such an irregularity. It is a form of protection for those who use these items later. Even Aunt Margaret does it now, though this is a tradition of my mother’s people, not of hers.”

  “You respect this aunt greatly, I can see. She is your father’s sister?”

  It seemed to Creidhe there was a studied casualness about this question; she began to feel an odd sensation in her spine, a kind of tingling anticipation. “Oh, no,” she told him. “Aunt Margaret is not my blood kin; she is an old friend of my parents, that is all. I think of her as both aunt and friend; she has no daughters of her own, only Thorvald, and she has been very kind to me, and taught me all she knows of spinning and weaving. She enjoys my company, I think; her life would be rather lonely without our times together.”

  “Your young friend Thorvald—he is her son?”

  Creidhe nodded. “The only one, yes. Aunt Margaret’s husband was killed. She never married again, though she had plenty of offers. Will you answer my question now?”

  “Oh, yes. What was the question again?”

  She looked at him, surprised, and he gazed back, eyes bright with some emotion she could not interpret. Creidhe shivered; this felt like the brink of a precipice, like a moment of discovery. It came to her that perhaps she had got things entirely wrong. “Tell me what these are, these places where the writing flows into the margins of your work.”

  “Ah, yes,” Niall said softly, rolling up the sleeves of his coarse robe so that the fabric would not smudge the wet ink, and reaching to touch one such irregularity near the top of the page. The manuscript was a work of wondrous artistry, a creation to rival the Journey itself, and surely made with equal fire and equal love. “In a way, the answer is the same as yours. Our rule is strict here: kind, but strict. My own rule is more rigorous still, imposed in accordance with a vow, as indeed is the discipline we all follow, but somewhat harsher and more particular in my case.” His gaze had left the parchment now and was fixed on the middle distance, as if he saw something far away, or long ago. The dark intensity of those eyes conjured an image of Thorvald on the clifftop, hair wild in the wind, his father’s letter in his hand and bitter words on his lips. “For some men, and some women, I imagine,” Niall went on, “the most difficult constraint can be not to act when one sees how one could have some influence in the world; not to solve puzzles when the intellect cries out to stretch itself thus; to ignore solutions when they appear right before one’s eyes. But some men should not act; some men, it seems, can wreak only destruction, whether that is their intention or not. These small verses you see, crawling off the page like creatures escaping the confines of a cage, are the ramblings of one who chafes at such self-imposed fetters, that is all. The words are safe enough, I believe; indeed, if they take the place of actions, they perform much the same function as your hidden escape hatches, allowing what is perilous to dissipate before any real harm is done. There is some cost to me, and to you, as makers of these maps of the soul, but that is a price we pay willingly; not to fashion such things is to wither and die. I’m rambling, Creidhe. Does that answer the question?”

  She nodded, unable to speak. It seemed to her a number of questions had been answered, and the knowledge was, for the moment, overwhelming. “I don’t know what to say to you.” It was a lame enough response to what had been, in its essence, a revelation of his inmost self.

  “There is no need to speak further of these matters,” Niall said quietly, rolling his sleeves back down to the wrists and reaching for his pen. “We understand one another, I think. I regret very much that I did not meet your friends before Asgrim took them away. Very much.”

  They worked on in silence a while, and if a confusion of thoughts and feelings caused both quill and needle to move less than freely, neither the white-haired hermit nor the young woman put this into words. It was Creidhe, eventually, who broke the silence.

  “There are some things we do need to discuss. You left your explanations half finished yesterday. Asgrim, and the threat from the other tribe—I don’t entirely understand that, and I need to, if it places me in danger. And the boys—I need to know what it is he plans for them.”

  “Yes, Creidhe, we must indeed come to grips with this, for increasingly I fear for your safety here. I think in a day or so we may need to move you elsewhere, before Asgrim decides you have enjoyed our hospitality for too long. I have earned his deep distrust over the years; I am one of the few who is prepared to challenge his authority here; though, being the mild-mannered cleric that I am, I do so only with words, never deeds.” He gave a crooked smile. “We shall call Breccan back shortly, and the two of us will set it all out for you; then we’ll decide what to do. But not just yet. I have a small favor to ask you.” A touch of diffidence had crept into his voice.

  “What favor?” asked Creidhe.

  Niall hesitated. “I don’t wish to speak of the past,” he said. “Will you respect that?”

  “Of course.” Thorvald would most certainly want to speak of the past. But Thorvald was not here, and she herself had no business prying into this man’s secrets. Besides, she had made Thorvald a promise, and the more Niall told her, the harder it was going to be to keep it. “If that’s what you want.”

  “On the other hand,” he said, “I would very much like to hear a little of your life at home: your family, your friends, the world you inhabit when not sailing the seas in search of adventure. I hope you will indulge an old man’s foolishness.”

&
nbsp; “An old man?” She raised her brows at him.

  “It was what you thought, wasn’t it?”

  “You do have white hair. One assumes—”

  “I was a young man when I began my journey here. By the time I set foot on this shore my hair was of the hue you see now. If that makes me old, then I am old. Will you—?”

  “It might be rather boring for you. A lot of my life is spent in front of a loom, or surrounded by cooking pots.”

  “All the same.”

  She set her tale out carefully, painting a picture for him: of the times of peace in the Light Isles, the breeding and rearing of fine stock, the nurturing of good crops, the governing of a society that had grown from two races—the ancient one of the Folk, her mother’s people, whose kings had ruled there for generation on generation; and the Norse newcomers, her father’s race, who now dwelt in the isles alongside the others, and indeed outnumbered them. She spoke of the existence of several faiths: Christian hermits such as himself dwelt in the Light Isles cheek by jowl with the priestesses of the ancient way—her own sister was one such wise woman—and the adherents to the gods of the snow lands, Odin, Thor, Freyr. She told of her father, how he led the people in the ways of peace and justice; of her mother, whose wisdom and insight had mended many a quarrel between the disparate folk of the islands over the years. Because Niall did not interrupt, did not cut her short, she went on to speak of her sisters, and the one small brother who had died before he reached his fifth birthday. She spoke of Margaret, and of Thorvald, close in age to her own elder sister, Eanna, the one who was a priestess. After a while she saw that he had stopped pretending to write and sat with chin in hand and eyes distant, simply listening.

  “I am bound by a promise, you understand,” she said, near the end. “Thorvald was eighteen last autumn. Then, in spring, his mother gave him a certain piece of information. It was this that sparked his journey here. I cannot say if he will find what he seeks. It is a matter of great importance to him; a search for identity, one might say.”

  “Mmm,” said Brother Niall. “Difficult, and not just for the young man himself. You are a loyal friend, Creidhe; your father’s daughter, no doubt of it.” His voice was so quiet she could hardly hear it, even in the silence of the cottage. “One might carry such a search to its logical conclusion and find oneself bitterly disappointed with the result. He’d better have stayed home and got on with his life, I think.”

  “Like you,” Creidhe said carefully, “Thorvald is a man who finds it hard not to act. That’s why I need to know what he’s doing now, away with Asgrim. I have a terrible feeling he’s getting himself into some sort of trouble.”

  “Let us call Brother Breccan,” Niall said, rising to his feet, “and think of a plan of action. I’m afraid trusting our future to God’s mercy will be inadequate in this particular case.”

  “Just one thing before you call him.” Creidhe hesitated. This must be said; she must hope he would not be offended. “Don’t you believe a man can change? You said something about—about wreaking destruction, as if that were the only path possible. Aren’t you a Christian? Brother Tadhg tells us the Christian God loves even sinners; that a man need only turn to him and he can start his life anew. If he has done ill, God forgives it and lets him try again. If you believe that, how can you speak thus of a man locked into evil-doing?”

  “Ah. You speak from your own experience; you have grown up among the brave and virtuous, and it has clouded your judgment somewhat, I think. I am as much of a Christian as Breccan has been able to make of me since he came to this shore. His intentions are good.” His tone was bleak as frost, his eyes without expression. “Can a man change? One could spend a lifetime debating that point and never come to a conclusion. Shall I call the others?”

  Thus it was that Creidhe learned the full and twisted story: how, after the girl, Sula, had produced the child they needed, the Unspoken had lost him before his second summer in their midst. He’d been stolen, taken away by Asgrim’s own son, Sula’s brother, not back to the settlements of the Long Knife people but over the water to the Isle of Clouds, where he had been kept in hiding ever since, for five long years. That isle was forbidden to the tribe of the Unspoken: their lore decreed that it was death to approach the place. Being a holy man, Foxmask himself was apparently exempt from this rule. For the rest, perhaps it was death anyway, lore or no lore. The sea currents between the island and the shore by Council Fjord were feared by every fisherman of the Long Knife people and shunned in any season, save for a brief time around midsummer, when a strange hush would descend on the churning ocean and one might cross over and return in safety between one day’s sunrise and the next day’s dusk. Even so, they did this only because they must. The Unspoken had set a curse on the Long Knife people when Fox-mask was stolen. Until he was recovered from his captors and returned to his own tribe, no Long Knife infant would live to see the sun rise twice. The voices came and sang them into darkness.

  So, the hunt: every summer they embarked on it, year after year, and every summer the bleeding survivors limped back with the broken bodies of the fallen—those they had managed to recover. Asgrim had led them into this death trap five times now; this summer would be the sixth. In all those years, not one infant born to the Long Knife people had survived. Nobody was quite sure what tribe it was that dwelt on the Isle of Clouds, only that they were fierce as wild beasts, numerous, and skilled in magic. The Long Knife people were not even sure that Foxmask himself still lived, but it was evident that the Unspoken believed it to be so and would continue to punish them until the seer was found.

  “I see,” said Creidhe. As Niall and Breccan told the story, she had been cooking; now she took the flatcakes from the iron pan suspended over the fire and set them on a platter. Colm was here too; his eyes lit up at the sight of the crisp, golden dough, the savory smell of herbs and sizzling butter. It was, in fact, merely a concoction of eggs and flour and a bit of this and that. The trick was all in the beating. “Do you think Asgrim has persuaded Thorvald and Sam to help him in this endeavor? To be a part of it? I cannot think Sam would do so willingly.”

  “But Thorvald might?” queried Brother Niall, cutting his flatcake and regarding it with appreciation. “Yes, Creidhe, this seems the likeliest explanation for their extended absence. A trade, perhaps—they assist in preparations for the hunt and they earn what they need to repair the boat. I did hear Asgrim had come over to move the boat to Council Fjord. That gave me pause for thought.”

  Creidhe felt her heart thumping. “They should not fight—I mean, Sam knows nothing at all of warcraft, and Thorvald—”

  “Strangely, it’s not that I’m concerned about,” Niall said. “Mmm, you certainly do know how to cook. No, I fear that the prompt whisking away of these two young men, followed by their lengthy absence, is no more than a strategy to remove them from you, Creidhe. You are in danger. If Asgrim can finish this struggle without the loss of any more lives, he will do so. After five years his men grow dispirited. It cannot be long before they start to question his authority openly, to challenge his role as chieftain. The women too; this conflict not only robs them of their infants, it slaughters their men and leaves them with the entire burden of maintaining stock, fields, the very structure of community here. There are only boys to do the fishing once Asgrim gathers his force together, and few enough of those. The women themselves spend weary days out on the lake now, with scant harvest to be taken. It is a heavy load for the Long Knife people. Asgrim cannot afford another hunt.”

  Creidhe waited.

  “It seems to us,” Breccan spoke in his soft brogue, “that with you here among us, Asgrim has the means to make a bargain with the Unspoken. His men have shown quite clearly the impossibility of retrieving Foxmask from this island fortress. What can this summer bring but another expedition doomed to defeat? So, he seizes the chance to offer an alternative. He calls a meeting with the Unspoken, something we know is still possible for him, though they will no
longer attend council nor speak to others of the Long Knife. He meets with their elders and presents them with the chance to breed another seer, a new Foxmask. In return, there will be no more deaths, no more voices in the night. To buy this peace, he offers them another fair-haired girl: yourself.”

  There was silence. Creidhe could feel the rapid beating of her heart, the chill crawling across her flesh. If she had not fled the settlement, perhaps even now she might be suffering the same fate as Asgrim’s daughter.

  “But wait,” she said, frowning. “It was his own daughter they stole before, stole and treated so cruelly. Surely no father would seek to have that happen to another girl, surely he would recoil from such an idea, even though I am a stranger. He was kind to me.”

  “Perhaps,” said Niall. “But I believe this is just what Asgrim plans. He would have acted before the birth of Jofrid’s son, if he could, and so prevented yet another loss. The early arrival of the child made that impossible; as I said, in this time of conflict the Unspoken will deal only with the Ruler himself, and I imagine it takes time to arrange such a parley. So that infant was lost, but he can save his men and allow the womenfolk of his tribe the chance to bear children without fear once more. He must offer his adversary this prize before hunt time. We don’t have long.”